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Dancing With the Devils

By SETH KUGEL

Published: October 23, 2005

A SMALL, pothole-laden city in the central valley of the Dominican Republic, anchored by a concrete-pillared, irregularly shaped cathedral whose decidedly ugly look takes some time to grow on you, La Vega isn't high on the to-do list of most travelers. There are no beaches, a few tolerable hotels, some unremarkable restaurants and, for 11 months of the year, no real reason to go there.

But that changes in February, when Carnaval comes to town. Then, the quiet streets of La Vega are crowded with visitors who seem to double the population of 200,000, the clubs fill with deafening music that keeps their customers dancing until almost dawn, and -- most notably -- grotesquely beautiful, intricately decorated, jingle-bell-draped demons race through the streets of the jam-packed town every Sunday, whipping anyone who dares to get in their way with reinforced cow bladders that carry a surprisingly nasty sting.

It is a month peppered with street concerts that attract the country's big music stars; of weeks spent with family members who have returned home to relive the traditions of their childhood; of days and nights filled with music -- the blaring brass of merengue, the tinny guitar of bachata, both played at absurdly high volumes on huge portable speakers -- that acts as a kind of nonstop soundtrack to the surreal events that unfold as Carnaval gathers steam.

Carnaval takes place on each weekend of February, with parades on Sundays, culminating with the largest one, on Feb. 27, Dominican Independence Day. Many Dominican cities and towns have their own Carnaval traditions, usually with some demonic or outrageous character as its symbol and centerpiece. But none rivals that of La Vega, and, in fact, many other cities send representatives there on the 27th to march alongside that town's famed diablos cojuelos -- horned, fanged, winged creatures whose outfits are created in ramshackle workshops by people who have been honing this skill for years.

The legendary Dominican singer Fernandito Villalona summed up the experience in a Spanish-language merengue that you'll hear repeatedly if you go to La Vega:

When February comes, everything is happiness,

Dance in the street by night, dance in the street by day

Historians trace such carnival celebrations (carnaval, in Spanish) as far back as pagan Rome and even ancient Egypt, but the modern incarnation emerged from Catholic traditions that came with colonialism and were deeply influenced by African slaves. The word carnival is said to come from the Latin ''carne vale,'' a farewell to meat, which explains why it was traditionally celebrated in the three days before Lent, ending with Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, festivities preceding Ash Wednesday. But in the Dominican Republic it has become more closely associated with Independence Day.

In La Vega, Carnaval is a decidedly multigenerational event. While local partygoers in their teens and 20's rule the streets and the clubs -- witness the beer-swilling, high-decibel gathering Friday night at the Parque de los Estudiantes, a pocket park at a busy intersection -- their parents and grandparents are equally enthusiastic participants in the celebrations. During my visit last February, on the final weekend of the celebrations, one of the best dancers around was Lisa Fernanda Tapia, shaking her hips as she stood on the outskirts of a huge street party late into a Saturday night. The next day, she turned 4.

I arrived in La Vega on a Friday afternoon, and encountered a typical, humming Dominican town, full of boisterous, friendly people -- many of whom were gathered in the town square, where some kids shined shoes and others chased pigeons while a nearby vendor sold coconut sweets for 5 pesos apiece.

Using my cellphone (a worker at the local Verizon office had helped me temporarily reprogram it with a local number -- very convenient), I called Mayobanex Mota, the nephew of an acquaintance of a friend of mine in New York, hoping to get some advice on what to do in La Vega. He turned out to be the head of Los Rebeldes, one of the top local teams -- members of which dress in identical diablo cojuelo costumes. That meant he had little time to be a guide, but did give some excellent advice (and some pretty good coffee) in his family's backyard before I set off to explore La Vega.

I seemed to be one of the few foreigners in town for the celebration. The half-dozen groups of non-Dominicans that I talked to were resort workers, Peace Corps volunteers and artists from places ranging from Kansas to Chile who were all now living in this country. The only other vacationers I met were Dominican-Americans, back home for a visit.

On Friday night, after an unmemorable dinner of shrimp and the fried mashed plantain dish known as mofongo at a drab restaurant that resembled a hospital cafeteria, I set out on my own to the Parque de los Estudiantes, to mix with the locals, and ended up sharing a few big bottles of Presidente beer from a nearby open-air bar with a group of men and women in their 20's. (The ability to speak Spanish is definitely a plus in La Vega, but visitors will also encounter many Veganos, as the residents are known, who have spent some time or perhaps lived, in the United States, and can help out when language skills falter.)